Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a medical-image processing apparatus capable of determining whether a blood vessel is present outside a tubular structure, a method for controlling the same, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
A blood vessel is a tubular structure, such as a vein, artery, or capillary, that carries blood through tissues and organs. A lesion is an abnormal damage or change in tissue of an organism, usually caused by disease or trauma. Doctors sometimes extract tissue from a lesion (a target) of a patient to perform pathological inspection or the like.
Specifically, doctors acquire the tissue of a lesion outside a tubular structure, such as a bronchial tube, (for example, a lung region serving as an airway in a respiratory tract that conducts air into the lungs) of a patient by inserting an injection needle into the tubular structure.
In inserting a needle into the target from the interior of a tubular structure, sticking the needle into a blood vessel by mistake will pose a danger to the patient. To prevent it, doctors need to insert the needle away from a blood vessel present outside the tubular structure.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-135937 discloses a technique for forming a three-dimensional image in which a virtual three-dimensional image of the actual motion of a surgical tool is combined with an image of a body organ and so forth based on a tomographic image acquired by an X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner or a nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner.
However, this is troublesome because doctors need to form an image of the inner wall of the tubular structure and an image of blood vessels running outside the tubular structure and to check the images in order to determine how the blood vessels run outside the tubular structure.